Strategic leadership may be one of the hardest — and most vital — skills for school leaders to master. Liz City , senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a long-time coach to school and system leaders across the country, says strategic leadership is not innate but a skill that can be learned and strengthened over time . “We're in a context which, over the last five years, has been full of uncertainty and ambiguity,” City says. “I think that makes it harder for people to b...
Jun 11, 2025•26 min•Season 1Ep. 464
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the statistics on global education — millions of children, especially in low- and middle-income countries, are spending years in school without mastering foundational skills. But as Harvard Lecturer Robert Jenkins reminds us, we can't afford to stay stuck in what we think we know about the learning crisis. Innovation is not just possible — it’s essential, he says. “When you look at the big picture overall globally, it feels daunting, the scale of the challenge,” ...
Jun 02, 2025•19 min•Season 1Ep. 463
Texas and California often appear to be worlds apart when it comes to politics and culture, but the education students are getting – as far as their textbooks go, at least – may not be so different. University of Chicago Assistant Professor Anjali Adukia investigated more than 260 textbooks used in both public and religiously affiliated schools in the two states, analyzing their portrayal of race, gender, religion, and historical events. “I think the part that was the most surprising to me is de...
May 14, 2025•23 min•Season 1Ep. 462
As a third-grade teacher, Lily Howard Scott noticed how she spoke to students impacted more than just their experience in the classroom. How teachers speak to their students and intentional shifts in language can nurture children’s inner lives, foster self-regulation and reduce perfectionism, she says, and become their inner voice. “The thing about teachers, particularly elementary school teachers, is they have this superpower, which is that they catch kids at a moment where their capacity for n...
Apr 30, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 461
To succeed in school, in life, and as contributors to a more equitable society, students must be able to recognize, analyze, and challenge systemic injustices, say Harvard Lecturer Aaliyah El-Amin and Boston College Professor Scott Seider. Through their research, they are examining what it truly means to pursue education for justice in K–12 schools. “The kids who are in classrooms right now are our country's next generation of leaders,” says El-Amin. “They’re the people who are going to help det...
Apr 16, 2025•21 min•Season 1Ep. 460
In today’s digital landscape, schools face growing cybersecurity threats that can disrupt learning, compromise sensitive data, and leave administrators scrambling to recover. With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, understanding these risks and being prepared is more critical than ever, says Lisa Plaggemier, the executive director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance. “The vast majority of bad things that happen at institutions like schools and municipalities-- again, under-resourced ...
Apr 02, 2025•24 min•Season 1Ep. 459
How we see the world and interact with each other, especially whether we create welcoming environments of acceptance, does not always come naturally. Tim Shriver, chair of the Special Olympics, and Stephanie Jones, a Harvard professor whose research focuses on social emotional development, say that it’s something we can teach, and fostering an inclusive and accepting mindset in schools and communities matters. “This is not stuff that we're necessarily born with. It all grows and emerges through ...
Mar 19, 2025•20 min•Season 1Ep. 458
Post-pandemic schools are still feeling the aftershocks—socially, emotionally, and politically – say educators and co-authors Mathew Portell and Tyisha Noise. Educators, students, and administrators are navigating a landscape that feels more uncertain than ever, with growing political pressures, policy shifts, and the lingering impact of disrupted learning. “In this hurrying time of, ‘we've got to get kids caught up,’ that intensity is there. And I think it's playing a major role in missing gaps...
Mar 05, 2025•29 min•Season 1Ep. 457
Eve L. Ewing wants people to talk, not just about how American schools started, but also how that can inform the future of schools, especially for Black and Native children. She argues that Black and Native children’s schooling experience is more than just a footnote, but a central narrative in history. “From the very first classes that I taught, I always began by telling my students, you cannot understand the history of schools in this country if you don't understand schools for Black people an...
Feb 19, 2025•20 min•Season 1Ep. 456
The U.S. Department of Education has been a subject of political debate since its creation in 1980. “It's the one whose status has been most tenuous from the inception. So the recent calls we've heard to eliminate the Department of Education have really been a constant feature of its history from the moment it was created,” says Marty West, a Harvard professor specializing in the politics of K-12 education. He explains that the DoEd, established in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter, was politica...
Feb 06, 2025•22 min•Season 1Ep. 455
When it comes to making an impact on school outcomes, Harvard Professor Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell says we often overlook the power of relationships within the school . “I think the complexity of how relationships work is one of the reasons why the first place we often go when we're trying to improve schools is to something like policies and procedures,” she says. “It seems very concrete. Put the policy in place. Something's going to happen. Have a new procedure. People are going to follow it. Cros...
Nov 27, 2024•27 min•Season 1Ep. 454
Andrew Tucker says the growing adoption of Portraits of a Graduate in K-12 education is a way to address gaps in education and prepare students to thrive in an evolving workforce. Portraits of a Graduate (POG) are frameworks, adopted by a state or district, that defines the skills and competencies students should have upon graduation, extending beyond academic benchmarks. “For a long time-- maybe generations really-- in our K-12 system, we've really focused on a single metric for success, and th...
Nov 20, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 453
Laura Chávez-Moreno says bilingual education inadvertently creates boundaries around Latinx identity by gathering Spanish-speaking students together. “Bilingual education, rightfully so, has focused on language,” says Chávez-Moreno, an assistant professor at UCLA. “But there has to be also a recognition that bilingual education, because it is a part of schooling in the U.S., that it is also engaging in the process of creating ideas about race and about creating our ideas about racialized groups....
Nov 13, 2024•16 min•Season 1Ep. 452
The superintendent’s role is challenging and always evolving but too often educators step into this leadership position not fully prepared for what’s ahead. As a position with high turnover and equally high isolation at times, Lindsay Whorton, The Holdsworth Center president, says we need to be more upfront about the role if we are to attract, support, and retain leaders. “What we have to do is be honest but also be encouraging and celebrate what an incredible opportunity it is to be in these ro...
Nov 06, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 451
Edward Clapp wants education to shift from a traditional, individualistic view of creativity toward a participatory, socially distributed perspective. Clapp, principal investigator at Harvard’s Project Zero and co-author of, “The Participatory Creativity Guide for Educators,” doesn’t see creativity as a personal trait some people "possess" or "are," instead he proposes that everyone can "participate" in creativity. “Young people play a variety of roles when they participate in creativity, each l...
Oct 30, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 450
Sexual misconduct by school employees is more prevalent than many of us want to believe, according to Charol Shakeshaft, a distinguished professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Many times, school culture gets in the way of stopping this abuse from happening. “What I find is that teachers see things, kids see things, administrators see things, parents see things. And what they see are what I call red flags of possible problems, but certainly what they see are bou...
Oct 23, 2024•23 min•Season 1Ep. 449
Elliot Haspel believes universal childcare can happen in America, especially because it affects everyone across red and blue lines. Haspel, senior fellow at Capita, says part of the challenge is recognizing that childcare is something Americans seen as a public good. Reflecting on the history of childcare in America, Haspel points out how certain policy failures, particularly the Comprehensive Child Development Act in the 1970s, have led to where we are today. “We've never gotten to this point i...
Oct 16, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 448
Drawing from her research and interviews with boys over the past three decades, Niobe Way, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, reveals how boys in early adolescence express a strong desire for close, emotionally intimate friendships, but as they grow older, societal pressures cause them to suppress these feelings. She calls this a crisis of connection and it’s affecting all of us. “This crisis of connection is not just for boys and young men. It's with everybody where...
Oct 09, 2024•23 min•Season 1Ep. 447
The explosion of artificial intelligence exposed many benefits and challenges for children interacting with AI, especially in educational and social contexts. “The big question becomes whether children can benefit from those AI interactions in a way that is similar to how they benefit from interacting with other people,” says Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “So if we talk about learning first, my research, along with that of many others, show that chi...
Oct 02, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 446
The 2024 Election is anything but easy to teach in a classroom today where fears range from community backlash, restrictive state policies, and job security. For many teachers, the election is a topic to avoid, but Eric Soto-Shed, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, insists we're missing a real opportunity by doing so. “We’re at a crisis right now in terms of Americans belief in our fundamental democratic system – not for this candidate or that candidate but does the system wor...
Sep 25, 2024•23 min•Season 1Ep. 445
As millions of students prepare for summer vacation, many parents may worry about endless time spent on the screen. Michael Rich, pediatrician and Director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, says children spend more time on the screen during the summer but that the real challenge is balance between screen time and offline activities. “Now, the issue with screen time also should not be that the time you spend on screen is toxic, but that it is displacing something else. An...
Apr 17, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 444
With looming threats of high teacher turnover rates during COVID-19, Olivia Chi, an assistant professor at Boston University, wanted to study how the pandemic shaped who decided to become a teacher. Many states foresaw serious disruptions to the teacher pipeline as testing centers and schools closed around the county. While teacher requirements differ by state, many require a bachelor’s or master’s teacher education program, student teaching, state teaching exams, or some type of alternative cer...
Apr 10, 2024•24 min•Season 1Ep. 443
While most schools in the United States do not report using corporal punishment – the use of pain as punishment -- it still impacts tens of thousands of students annually, particularly in states where it remains legal. Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued a call this fall to end such practices in school. “As pediatricians, we don't recommend corporal punishment. We know it's not an ef...
Apr 03, 2024•16 min•Season 1Ep. 442
Family engagement plays a pivotal role in combatting chronic absenteeism. The number of students who are chronically absent – missing 10% or more of the school year – has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Eyal Bergman, senior vice president at Learning Heroes, studied this issue and was surprised to discover how schools with robust family engagement had significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism. “It shows that the strength of a school's family engagement is actually more predictive of a sch...
Mar 27, 2024•27 min•Season 1Ep. 441
For many first-generation college students, the dream of pursuing a college degree is often accompanied by financial uncertainty and adversities that keep it as just a dream. The faulty rollout of a new, more simplified Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form may only keep this student population from even trying. “The intent of simplifying it and making it 'Better FAFSA' was actually very much right-footed to really make sure that it can go to the intent of providing and expanding...
Mar 20, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 440
Math has a problem when it comes to equitable learning. The way math is taught and how students are tracked is part of the issue, according to Kentaro Iwasaki, a former math teacher who led new math standards in California and now works with school districts nationwide to overhaul their math programs. Tracking in math contributes to segregation, with Black and brown students often placed in lower-track classes compared to their white and Asian counterparts, he says. “When we go into classes or s...
Mar 13, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 439
Janet Patti and Robin Stern joined forces decades ago when they recognized the crucial role of emotional intelligence for school leaders. How educators understand and manage emotions can positively impact the entire school community, contribute to better leadership, well-being, and resilience. The problem though is that for many education leaders developing emotional intelligence is low on the to do list. “People can burn out. People can be exhausted. And we hear that from leaders. It really tak...
Mar 06, 2024•26 min•Season 1Ep. 438
Over the past few years, a battle is taking place on many school grounds – one being driven by mothers that is inevitably shaping the future of schools. Laura Pappano – a journalist with decades covering education – couldn’t ignore the growing influence of these movements on education policies and challenging public schools. In her book, “School Moms,” she reports on the well-organized efforts of far-right movements, such as Moms for Liberty, in framing attacks on schools, influencing language a...
Feb 28, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 437
In a world increasingly dominated by structured routines and adult supervision, renowned psychologist Peter Gray is not surprised that children’s mental health challenges and anxiety has been on the rise for decades. “We are so overprotecting children, because we are so always there to solve their problems for them, they're not developing the sense that they can solve their own problem,” Gray says, adding that clinical questionnaires conducted throughout the latter half of the 20th century showe...
Feb 21, 2024•27 min•Season 1Ep. 436
How do we teach children to love reading amidst the ongoing debates surrounding literacy curriculums and instructional methods, and the emphasis on student outcomes? It's something that Pamela Mason, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, thinks about a lot. She's been both a teacher and school leader, and has spent decades training teachers on literacy instruction. She says it takes many pieces coming together to create the perfect mix -- especially making it fun -- for su...
Feb 14, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 435
